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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8936306" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 132: October 1998part 3/5City Stories: After several years in which the new Raven's Bluff locations focussed almost entirely on temples, they finally go back to covering shops and other establishments players might want to visit. Mother Phelia's Cupboard is an apothecary that provides non-magical healing for people who can't afford or don't trust the temples, plus minor mundane ailments that spells don't cover like headaches, hiccups & hangovers. (and infertility, weirdly enough, considering how many real world "magic spells" are about sex in some way) She seems like a wholesome middle-aged lady, but has a dark side. All this advanced medical knowledge was actually gained by experiments in dissection, starting by poisoning her unfaithful husband and moving onto grave robbery and killing clients she considers immoral. She's still doing more good than evil for the community at the moment, keeping her alignment neutral, but a little more desensitisation, a little more deciding that the ends justify the means, she could escalate to full Harold Shipman levels of murderousness. The kind of place where you could use the obvious services for quite a while before stumbling on the hidden adventure hook. How will your players react, and will they consider her hard-won knowledge worth preserving in a world where clerical magic outclasses mundane medicine so badly? Definitely some interesting debate to be had there, particularly if the characters lived through the Time of Troubles and are aware how easily the magic system could shift on them or simply stop working in some places. A refreshing break from their current formula that I could definitely see myself using in a game. Crime Doesn't Pay: Along with the removal of the code of conduct making it easier to talk about sex in here, it also means they're freer to talk about the role of law enforcement in your campaign without having to make them the good guys that PC's have to go along with or automatically lose the game. Not that you can't still work with them, as there are plenty of adventure opportunities in games like that, but at least they can talk more openly about why the law wouldn't be able to handle problems themselves. They rarely gain the high levels PC's manage, so after a few levels, the PC's will easily outclass the average patrol on the street. This means they'll have to call in special forces or hire another group of adventurers to deal with troublemakers, giving you a chance to get away. In practice, that means the more powerful PC's get, the more laws become suggestions rather than binding rules. (so just like the real world then) All fairly basic advice, but at least it’s not rehashed, simply because they couldn’t talk honestly about this specific topic before. They won’t be going full ACAB any time soon, but it’s still a change for the better. All I Really Need to Know I Learned from the AD&D game: A single page, humorous bit of talking about tropes showing once again that WotC are more willing to embrace what the D&D rules are and do well rather than trying to treat it as a generic game to tack all kinds of settings onto. You delve dungeons while carrying improbable amounts of gear, kill things and make your way out carrying even more improbable loads. Danger lurks around every corner and if you can get someone else to bear the brunt of it or come up with rules exploits that make you near invulnerable, all the better. It may still be a couple of years before 3e comes out, but they're already establishing the back to the dungeon mindset that'll be one of the big taglines when they advertise it. Many people never stopped playing like that, and will be very happy to see it return to favor after years of trying to keep up with the White Wolf's. Audition: Tom Prusa continues to be one of their most prolific adventure writers with this quirky little piece. The PC's are assigned to infiltrate the local thieves guild and take them down from within. (which kinda assumes that they're mostly law-abiding in the first place and the party thief hasn't been a fully paid-up member for ages, given the expected character level) Since they don't trust you, they set some pretty tough challenges for joining. You need to complete a run full of tricks & traps as a group, then each player needs to go into town and do a sneaky solo mission that must be done nonlethally, as like any good thieves guild they want to keep a low profile and not destroy the places they steal from. Then, having won their trust and met the guild leader, they need to figure out a good plan to betray them before they go through the final joining ceremony, at which point they'll be geased and unable to turn against their new companions. (presuming a pretty high magic campaign, but I guess the forgotten realms definitely qualifies as that) While you could in theory do this all tournament style in a single session, it looks like it'd be a bit of a squeeze, particularly trying to handle all 6 player's solo missions in that time without either rushing through them shallowly or boring the other players when it's not their turn. So this definitely earns quite a few points for ambition, trying something different and mixing up various types of encounters, but also loses some for having an extended splitting the party section and a lot of assumptions that mean it wouldn't work with many campaign worlds/groups. Still, at least it's flawed in interesting ways, which keeps it on the usable end of the quality spectrum overall.</blockquote>

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